Conventional technologies for presenting advertisements to potential customers provide a variety of mediums in which to present those advertisements. People can put advertisements in their non-website content documents presently by selling space within the document, similar to how a magazine publisher would sell advertisement space in their magazine. Advertisements can also be displayed on web sites, for example, via an advertisement banner. Additionally, advertisements can be displayed on search engines via a sponsored advertisement. In targeted advertising, advertisers pay for the advertisements by choosing keywords or keyword phrases, and competing against other advertisers who also want their advertisements to appear on web sites relevant to those keywords or keyword phrases.
When an end user enters a web site containing advertisements, the advertisements (for which the advertisers have bid on keyword or keyword phrases) are displayed. The displaying of the advertisements is referred to as an ‘impression’. The advertisers do not pay for impressions. Instead, advertisers bid on “keywords” that they believe their target customers would most likely type in the search bar in order to find their type of product or service. When an end user selects (i.e., “clicks”) on an advertisement, the advertiser is charged for that selection. The advertiser is charged whatever amount the advertiser bid on the keyword or keyword phrase that caused the displaying (i.e., impression) of the advertisement. Each time an end user clicks on the advertisement, the advertiser is charged for that selection. For example, if an advertiser sells blue dots, the advertiser would bid on the keyword “blue dots”, with the expectation that a user would type those words in the search bar, see their ad, click on it and eventually make a purchase. These ads are called “sponsored links” or “sponsored ads” and appear next to and sometimes above the search results on the search engine's webpage. This is known as “pay per click” since the advertiser only pays for the advertisement when an end user selects (i.e., “clicks”) on the advertisement. Web site owners also receive a small amount of revenue each time an end user selects (i.e., “clicks”) on an advertisement that appears on the web site owner's web site.